Federal Reference Method (FRM) has been 'the gold standard' in the field of ambient PM measurement. But FRM methods also have disadvantages. For instance, samples are held at ambient temperature for several days prior to analysis, the volatile fraction will be lost during this time. Furthermore, FRM methods need a lot of efforts on weighting, transferring the filter and calculating. The Federal Equivalent Method (FEM) is now introduced to many US sites, and it releases some manual efforts. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the agreement of the data between FEM and FRM. The data was from five sites (Lebanon, Sycamore, Taft, Batavia and Middletown) where both FRM and FEM data are collected. The sites are managed by the Hamilton County Department of Environmental Service. The data ranged from January 2004 to December 2010. The main method is plotting a linear regression between the two methods and taking its intercept and slope of the line. Put the point into the acceptance limit polygon. The polygon method is proposed by EPA. The data in Lebanon, Batavia, and Middletown mostly fall within the acceptance polygon. The data in Taft and Sycamore are out of the acceptance most of the time, which means bad agreement between FRM and FEM in these two sites. Future work will focus on combining more meteorology data and the speciation of the PM. Using non-linear and multi-linear regression methods to have further study about the agreement between two methods.

Comparison of Federal Equivalent Method (FEM) and Federal Reference Method (FRM) in evaluating PM<sub>2.5</sub> in Cincinnati, Ohio

246th National Meeting (2013)

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Comparison of Federal Equivalent Method (FEM) and Federal Reference Method (FRM) in evaluating PM2.5 in Cincinnati, Ohio

Comparison of Federal Equivalent Method (FEM) and Federal Reference Method (FRM) in evaluating PM_2.5 in Cincinnati, Ohio